“I find myself saying the same things I’ve said, or that I have been saying, for the last 30 years, and that feels pointless,” he says. Weller entered the musical-and political-fray 43 years ago this spring with the electrifying first single by The Jam, “In The City.” Over the years he’s dabbled in political songs-and even toured in the ‘80s with musician/activist Billy Bragg-but now he feels it was the naïveté of youth that drove him, and was mostly futile. We all need to take a really hard look at that as often as we can, I think, and I’m glad that at least some of us finally are.” “It’s always more, more, more: The latest iPhone, or whatever, marketed to us as though we need it, when people are struggling to pay the rent or put food on their plates. “I look at my family, and I’m grateful for all the money and privilege we’ve got, but materialism doesn’t really make you happy,” he explains. The song grew from Weller taking a hard look at all he’s accrued for himself and his family over the years. There’s perhaps no better example of Weller’s soul-drenched pop than “More,” a standout track off On Sunset-pushed along by an arresting string arrangement by Game Of Thrones composer Hannah Peel, who also contributed to True Meanings and last year’s Other Aspects live album. So I wanted to keep this album quite soulful, with a kind of electronic edge to it as well, so that it would be like those albums in that it was a little journey.” “And even when they were, they were about good tunes and good melodies that took you to a really special place. “The soul albums I loved when I was young weren’t always political,” Weller says. So there ends up being abstract elements in the songs that makes them interesting, I think.”Īnd, of course, the sonic through line is Weller’s love for old-school soul. And whereas there was a time when I would’ve edited the weird bits out, these days I’m more inclined to keep them in. You can chop your song up and tie a bridge around back to front, or put a chorus in front of the verse. And also, the editing thing is just mental, man. “I think the quality of the recordings has got so much better over the last few years, to the point where I personally have trouble hearing what’s analog and what’s digital. “When I’m writing, there’s a theme, and a subject to the song I’m working on, but there’ll also be some other little abstract things that come in, just because that’s what I think of at the time,” he says of his embrace of the digital recording process, and its cut-and-paste nature. All were sonically adventurous, full of one left turn after another, leaving Weller alone amongst his peers from punk’s Class of ’77 as an artist who was still pushing boundaries while selling out tours and scoring hit records. 2008’s 22 Dreams was an ambitious epic, while Wake Up the Nation, Sonik Kicks, A Kind Revolution, Saturns Pattern, and True Meanings explored modern-day punk, Krautrock, classic singer-songwriter conventions, experimental electronica and elegiac, acoustic-based music, respectively. In the wake of those awards, Weller released one remarkable album after another. “After I got the Brit Lifetime Achievement Award, and was offered the CBE (he turned it down, unceremoniously), I got to a point where I felt oddly free to do whatever the fuck I wanted,” he says. While his early solo albums- Wild Wood and Stanley Road, in particular-paved the way for Britpop, in the last twelve years Weller, who just turned 62, has found new inspiration in some of the most seemingly unlikely places.
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